Interaction between mountain waves and shear flow in an inertial layer

DOI10.1017/JFM.2017.39zbMATH Open1387.86025arXiv1605.04960OpenAlexW3105547032MaRDI QIDQ5364601FDOQ5364601

Authors: Jinhan Xie, J. Vanneste 

Publication date: 28 September 2017

Published in: Journal of Fluid Mechanics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Mountain-generated inertia-gravity waves (IGWs) affect the dynamics of both the atmosphere and the ocean through the mean force they exert as they interact with the flow. A key to this interaction is the presence of critical-level singularities or, when planetary rotation is taken into account, inertial-level singularities, where the Doppler-shifted wave frequency matches the local Coriolis frequency. We examine the role of the latter singularities by studying the steady wavepacket generated by a multiscale mountain in a rotating linear shear flow at low Rossby number. Using a combination of WKB and saddle-point approximations, we provide an explicit description of the form of the wavepacket, of the mean forcing it induces, and of the mean-flow response. We identify two distinguished regimes of wave propagation: Regime I applies far enough from a dominant inertial level for the standard ray-tracing approximation to be valid; Regime II applies to a thin region where the wavepacket structure is controlled by the inertial-level singularities. The wave--mean-flow interaction is governed by the change in Eliassen--Palm (or pseudomomentum) flux. This change is localised in a thin inertial layer where the wavepacket takes a limiting form of that found in Regime II. We solve a quasi-geostrophic potential-vorticity equation forced by the divergence of the Eliassen--Palm flux to compute the wave-induced mean flow. Our results, obtained in an inviscid limit, show that the wavepacket reaches a large-but-finite distance downstream of the mountain (specifically, a distance of order $k_{\ast }^{1/2}Delt{a}^{3/2}$, where $k_{\ast }^{-1}$ and $Delta$ measure the wave and envelope scales of the mountain) and extends horizontally over a similar scale.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.04960

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zbMATH Keywords

quasi-geostrophic flowstopographic effectswaves in rotating fluids

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

General theory of rotating fluids (76U05) Water waves, gravity waves; dispersion and scattering, nonlinear interaction (76B15) Hydrology, hydrography, oceanography (86A05) Meteorology and atmospheric physics (86A10)

Cites Work

• Title not available (Why is that?)
• The critical layer for internal gravity waves in a shear flow
• On the mean motion induced by internal gravity waves
• Propagation of internal gravity waves in fluids with shear flow and rotation
• Inertia-gravity waves in inertially stable and unstable shear flows

Cited In (5)

• Mean flows induced by inertia-gravity waves in a vertically confined domain
• Interfacial waves and hydraulic falls: Some applications to atmospheric flows in the lee of mountains
• The gravity wave momentum flux in hydrostatic flow with directional shear over elliptical mountains
• The role of buoyancy-frequency oscillations in the generation of mountain gravity waves
• Inertia-gravity waves in inertially stable and unstable shear flows

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